Saturday, July 04, 2009

what-causes-tit-eyes - 3

What goes with tit-eyes? Find out in another post coming soon.

In the meantime, here's another great scene from "Mouse Wreckers".These are all great frames to draw from.1948 was a year when Chuck was drawing extra solidly. He combined human anatomy with pears and sphere style with animal anatomy.I just love how solid and menacing this bulldog looks.The lip is beautiful!This dog is very McKimson like - the way McKimson drew 8 years earlier. Solid with great hierarchy!This is a clever gag, showing the scene turn red to indicate the Bulldog's growing rage.Even cloud scuffles had construction!Here it is:http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/Jones/48mousewreckers/ClaudeCatTitEyes3.mov

I had to watch the whole cartoon again, just based on the the stills and the short clips here. Even if you've seen it about a dozen times when you were a kid, you don't really get it until you're an adult. Which is of course true of any great piece of animation.

Jones and Maltese have created an amoral story. That is to say, Hubie and Bertie are complete villains, evil to the core, and they enjoy every minute of it. They even win in the end!

This is the complete opposite of a Disney cartoon, where the Big Bad Wolf and the Evil Queen and Captain Hook always lose. They have to lose, because they're the villains in a Disney cartoon.

But here, we have a couple of mouse-bums who just want to invade a house and take it over. Only the cat stands in their way, so they eliminate him by driving him nuts, using the most sadistic tricks they can think of. Which happen to be amazing tricks, but still not very nice ones (that's putting it mildly). Even the bulldog is just a pawn in their scheme.

Excuse me if I've gone on too long, but Mr. K does a lot of detailed drawing/drafting analysis, and the scriptwriters also deserve some attention. Where would the classic cartoons have been without Maltese and Pierce and Heck Allen and some of those other guys who could plot better than they could draw?

What's up with all the duplicate body parts? Is it a type of smear? Like when the dog is hitting the cat's head against the floor, you can see some frames have 2 cat faces.Same with the dog throwing punches. Sometimes, there are 2 arms.